Art + Science Now

My complementary copy of Art + Science Now arrived from the publishers today.

Buy it. It's great, and I'm on page 105 :-)

Here's the blurb:

Art + Science Now is a groundbreaking overview of the art being made at the cutting edge of scientific research. The first illustrated book in its field, it shows how some of the worlds most dynamic art is being produced not in museums, galleries and studios but in the laboratory, where artists probe cultural, philosophical and social questions connected with scientific and technological advances. Featuring the work of around 250 artists from the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Japan and elsewhere, it presents a broad range of projects, from body art to bioengineering of plants and insects, from music, dance and computer-controlled video performances to large-scale visual and sound installations. This comprehensive guide to contemporary art inspired or driven by scientific innovation points to intriguing new directions for the visual arts and traces a key strand in 21st-century aesthetics.

Land cover islands - a vision of a tidier world!

The Earth is a messy place with irregular shaped continents covered in all sorts of different stuff: cities, woodland, crops, etc. So I've tidied it up by collecting all the different types of land cover together. In the picture below, different types of land are gathered into circular islands whose area is equal to the total area of  grassland, forest or whatever. In the picture below that, I've gathered all the land together into one super-continent and divided the whole continent up like a pie-chart of land cover.

It turns out that all the World's urban areas could fit on an island just 616 km across. Over 50% of us would live on that island!

<p>land cover islands land cover pie-chart</p>

See also: Allotment - what would we each get if we shared the world out fairly? 

Data: IIASA (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/GAEZ/tab/t44.htm)

Allotment - what would we each get if we shared the world out fairly?

If we divided the surface of the Earth equally between its 6.5 billion human inhabitants we would each have an area of land 22,898 m2 (2.3 hectares, 5.7 acres). In the pictures below, that area has been formed into an island 107 metres x 214 metres, surrounded by our share of the ocean. The types of land available:  grassland, woodland, urban, desert, etc. has also been shared out fairly on this 'allotment'.

Allotment web version - oblique view

Oblique view of our 'allotment' with a person for scale.

 

Allotment web version

Allotment Island - our share

 

Just 0.2% of the land is urban, which means our share is a patch of urban land just 7 m x 7 m. Over 50% of us live in urban areas. Land use will change as the population grows, and our 'allotment' will shrink. When the World's population reaches 9 billion, we will each have an area just 182 m x 91 m (1.7 hectares, 4.1 acres).

Few of us actually do own as much as 2.3 hectares of land. Most of us own nothing (apart from the land we own in common with others, for instance because it is controlled by our government). Nevertheless, we all depend on our 'allotment', which means we have to rely on other people (on the whole, rich people) to look after it for us. Now, I've got nothing against rich people, but I'm not sure how reliable they are when it comes to looking after my allotment.

See also: Land cover islands: a vision of a tidier world

Data: IIASA (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/GAEZ/tab/t44.htm)

Award winning blog post

The estimable Institute of Excellence has honoured this blog with one of its coveted awards:

The best blog post about science, poetry and fairies, 2009.

This is a bit like winning an Oscar or a BAFTA, but only a bit. The award winning post: How W. H. Auden reconciles a respect for science with belief in fairies won the prize for being the best, and indeed only blog post about science, poetry and fairies.

I am grateful to Quentin Stafford Fraser's Awardify for the recognition.

 

Michele Bachmann: the stupidest politician of them all?

I seem to have written a lot about numeracy, climate change, politicians and science lately. Michele Bachmann brings it all together: a stupid, innumerate politician who passes off a risible pastiche of science as the real thing - and gets away with it!

Her initial argument is, 'if carbon dioxide is good it can't be bad' (See Is carbon dioxide good or bad?) She goes on to argue that as there's not very much of it carbon dioxide can't be a problem (See If carbon dioxide is a 'trace gas' why is it a problem?) In explaining how little of it there is she overstates the concentration of carbon dioxide by a factor of 100 (3% rather than 0.0388%) and understates the proportion that is anthropogenic by a factor of 10 (3% rather than 30%). None of that really matters to her though - she knows she is right so why does she need to know what she's talking about? Her understanding of science does not get past the public relations definition of science.

UK politics is not exactly inspiring at the moment, but I'd like to think that any MP who made a speech like Michele Bachmann's in the House of Commons would be laughed out of Westminster. At the very least, he or she would get a hard time from the press. How is it that Americans let their politicians get away with it? I wouldn't trust Michele Bachmann with a Soda Stream, let alone a planet. (A Soda Stream is a device for carbonating drinks.) It's time the rest of us realised that we can't leave the future of the World in the hands of US politicians - they aren't up to the job and I'm not sure there's much that the American people can do about it. 

Hands off to him

This comment on a talk at TED by Bill Gates made me envious, and also made me think about the problems people have with maths:

"It is very interested to watch this speech.it is more energitic to me.The following speech is full of sciencesand more useful to us.so i got more interesting facts through this hands off to him."

I would love to be able to write like that. Maths I can do badly, and it's great. For many people the idea of doing maths badly is so inhibiting that any mathematical thought becomes impossible, whereas I can muddle through confident that I'll reach a worthwhile conclusion even if the path I take is inelegant. Many people struggle with maths, and I think I know what that's like because I have a similar problem with language. Most people can 'just talk' - they can muddle through language - but not me.  

You will probably never hear something like "hands off to him" from me - I'm just too uptight. I have trouble saying a word out loud if I'm not sure how it's spelt and would feel extremely uncomfortable using idiom I didn't understand. Small talk makes me feel stupid - I can't 'just say' things. Foreign languages humiliate me, and that's not right, surely. Foreign languages should be liberating for the speaker because no one has any right to expect fluency. Being overly concerned about getting it right doesn't improve my communication, it makes it stilted and ultimately makes me mute. 

Fortunately for me, language is something one just has to get on with - there's no way of opting out. Maths is different because it is possible to go through life without solving an equation. But there is something very tragic about a life without mathematics. When I hear people proclaiming proudly that they 'Have never needed to know the cosine of anything' I think, 'How can that be? What have you been doing with yourself? Don't you know what you've been missing? What a waste!' 

It's only language that has an inhibiting effect on me. Everything else I do with abandon: I have no fear of failure and little fear of how I will look when I fail. It means I fail often and frequently look like a twat, neither of which do me any favours, but it's worth it to be able to think things that no one has thought before. The success I do enjoy comes from this freedom to fail. I know that if I make a mathematical mistake equivalent to 'hands off to him' I'll discover it soon enough and it will make me smile rather than cringe. 

We all know that there are times and places to be extremely precise or beautiful with language but most of the time the pressure is off. It's like that with mathematics too. Just as we don't always have to write like a lawyer or a poet we don't always have to calculate like mathematician or a physicist. People generally understand that there is a multitude of different ways that literacy can enhance our lives and empower us to make sense of the world. The same is true of numeracy, if only we can be a bit relaxed about it.

Nevertheless, envious as I am, if you are going to add a comment to video, as a courtesy to your readers it's polite to have a more substantial point to make than 'hands off to him'.

(For a similar, but far more articulate point about science rather than maths, see: http://bit.ly/ctnCE0)

Is this a disaster movie or a thriller?

Climate change sceptics think we are living in a thriller in which plucky heroes fight dark conspiring forces. But no - it's a disaster movie in which plucky heroes fight self-interest and complacency. Casting has already begun. Which role will you play?

The public response to climate change is so much like a disaster movie that we can learn a lot from films like The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Savage Bees (1976). In particular we learn that both greed and lack of imagination will be punished with severe irony. 

 

 

Disaster movies tend to work like this:

  1. A few people (the heroes) recognise a threat (e.g. killer bees) and try to warn the other people.
  2. The threat is inconvenient for most people (e.g. because they are organising a flower festival for Mardi Gras) so their response is sceptical (but not 'critical') and complacent:
     a. ‘It won’t affect us’ (wishful thinking)
     b. ‘Why is this idiot trying to spoil everything?’ (indignation)
  3. Somebody (the villain) who was either the cause of the threat or who stands to gain from a poor response to it encourages the wishful thinking and indignation of the people and so hampers a timely response from the heroes.
  4. Lots of people die needlessly and a few people who started off as sceptics become heroes… and then die.
  5. The remaining heroes get the girl/boy and the villain gets what’s coming (e.g. a deadly bee sting).

In the disaster film that is climate change, you can cast yourself. These are the available roles and their prospects:

Do you want to be... Prospects
An action hero who’s prepared to use your intellect (like Steve McQueen playing the Fire Chief in The Towering Inferno) Good: You’ll probably survive and get the girl/boy too (who may be the intellectual hero)
An intellectual hero who’s prepared for action (like Paul Newman playing the architect in The Towering Inferno) Good: You’ll probably survive and get the girl/boy too (who may be the action hero)
An intellectual or technical hero who’s nice enough, but slightly odd, and not really cut-out for action Bad: You’ll probably have to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure your friends can go on to save the day. On the plus side, although the audience won’t like you much while you are alive, they will warm to you once you are dead.
An action hero who’s loveable, but a bit dumb Bad: You’ll probably have to make the ultimate sacrifice for your friends. There won’t be a dry eye in the house. If you are lucky, you will return Lazarus-like towards the end of the movie having been saved by improbable means and tears of joy will spill from audience and cast alike.
A sceptic who comes to realise the error of your ways Good though precarious: when the crisis comes, you will reveal your intelligence and strength of character, which may save you from the fate of the sheep-like masses but may also put you in line for an ultimate sacrifice or two.
A determined sceptic who is not an inherently bad person but who suffers from a lack of imagination. You are probably also arrogant and ugly. You are responsible for the delay in responding to the threat, but it’s not totally your fault because you are flawed and gullible and have been manipulated by the villain. Very bad: lack of imagination, and the actions of the unimaginative are punishable by death. You will die saying something like, “But no… no… It can’t be… Aggghhhhh”
A villain who’s self-interested, ruthless and evil and who is responsible for the threat but doesn’t care. (like Richard Chamberlain playing the greedy electrical specialist in The Towering Inferno) Very bad: not only will you die, but it will also be a painful and ironic death, and the audience will cheer. (George W Bush – you have been warned!)
An extra Very bad: you are only there to reveal the scale of the disaster. The best you can hope for is to still be around at the end of the movie to symbolise the despair of a broken people and the new challenges facing humanity.

Climate change sceptics feel they are in a different film genre altogether – not a disaster movie but a thriller. In their film, dark forces in powerful institutions are manipulating the people for nefarious reasons. Only a few heroic characters can see through the deception. They have to fight both the indifference of the people and the dark forces themselves to ensure the world continues to be safe and free.

The questions you have to answer for yourself are:

  • Am I in a disaster movie or a thriller?
  • Which character am I going to play?

It’s pretty clear to me that we are in a disaster movie, not a thriller – and I’m Paul Newman :-)

Why it’s OK to be unscientific

Lazy politicians like science because it means that they don’t have to ‘do politics’(see: Why stupid lazy politicians like science.) Science can save them from having to reconcile competing interests, make choices or show leadership. With science politicians can simply shrug and say ‘it’s out of my hands, it’s science’. Even better they can say, ‘you can’t argue with this, it’s science’. So lazy politicians are wont to stretch the definition of science to include ideas that aren’t actually science so these ideas can also benefit from the rhetorical power of science. Lazy, stupid politicians don’t even notice they are doing it.

Eventually we end up with the ‘The public relations definition of science', which says science is everything that’s right and everything that’s right is science. There’s room for just about everything in this view of science. But as a result, little remains of what makes science special. Once the public relations definition of science takes hold, genuine science, which really does give us reliable and robust knowledge about the world that can only be challenged with enormous effort, then looks just like any other opinion that can be easily dismissed.

Science is special – not universal – and don’t let any lazy politician tell you otherwise. The worst crime against science is to equate it with rationality because doing so robs science of everything that makes it special. Science is not truth or reason, and it is not ‘the world’. Rather, it is a system that allows us to be confident about some ideas about the world. There are other ideas about the world that we can be confident about for other reasons, but the particular way we can be confident about scientific ideas makes science unique.

According to the public relations definition of science, if it’s right then it’s science. This could not be more wrong. Right aint got nothing to do with it (if I told you that there is a planet larger than Mercury beyond the orbit of Pluto I might be right, but it’s not science.) Only a small set of ideas about the world can be considered scientific. Most rational thought is unscientific and that’s fine. Unscientific is not the same as irrational. There are very few occasions when 'unscientific' should be considered an insult.